In general, an airbag is a representative safety device protecting occupants from vehicle collision.
Such an airbag is classified into a driver front airbag (DAB) and a passenger front airbag (PAB), which are installed in a steering wheel and an instrumental penal, respectively, to protect the driver and passengers from colliding with the internal structures of a vehicle upon vehicle collision, and a curtain airbag (CAB) installed in a side portion of a vehicle to enhance the safety of the occupants upon side collision.
Recently, an airbag is installed in a console between the driver and the passenger to prevent occupants at the front of a vehicle from colliding with each other, or a middle side airbag is additionally installed to prevent the driver from being sprung toward a side of the vehicle even if an occupant is absent in the passenger seat.
The middle side airbag is generally designed to be inflated between the driver seat and the passenger seat as described above. FIG. 1 shows a middle side airbag disclosed in a German Patent Publication No. DE 10038088 A1 as an example of a related art. According to the related art, as shown in FIG. 1, the middle side airbag is deployed from the lateral surface of the arm-rest part 5 including a console box.
As described above, a deployment hole 7 of the middle side airbag is positioned higher than a seat part 3a. In this case, the middle side airbag is inflated in a lateral direction without forming a partition.
In other words, when the middle side airbag is deployed while forming a wall (a partition) in a vertical direction, the driver or a passenger 1 can be sufficiently protected. However, the middle side airbag is not stuck between a set of a back part 3b and the seat part 3a and an arm-rest part 5, so that the function of the middle side airbag cannot be sufficiently realized.
Therefore, the driver and the passenger 1 may collide with each other and may be seriously injured on side collision of the vehicle, or the driver gets out of the driver seat to the passenger seat when the driver is alone seated in the vehicle, so that fatal accidents may occur.